Map of Life - Convergent Evolution Online

Welcome!

This website aims to tell you nearly everything you need (and may ever want) to know about convergent evolution. It allows you to explore the way that similar adaptive solutions have repeatedly evolved from unrelated starting points on the tree of life, as though following a metaphorical ‘map’.

“Evidence on the origin and spread of the two best-studied cases of parthenogenesis from the Australian arid zone, the grasshopper Warramaba virgo and the gecko Heteronotia binoei, suggests that they evolved in parallel.” – Kearney et al. (2006) Molecular Ecology vol. 15, p.1743

Spotlight on Research:

At least for some bats, vision is relatively important, but all of them are active in low-light conditions. Low-light vision is mediated by the extremely sensitive visual pigment rhodopsin. The analysis of the rhodopsin gene RH1 in a number of echolocating and non-echolocating bats presented in this paper provides evidence for convergent evolution, with multiple parallel amino acid changes in the two groups.